Tiki News & Lifestyle

My Tiki Bar Regrets

The Aku-Tiki Room was a spectacular bit of remote tiki, nestled in a farm restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It was built in 1967, after the owners fell in love with another Polynesian restaurant… not on a trip to Hawaii, not in California, but in Acapulco, of all places. Its humble location might mislead you: it was elaborately decorated, completely immersive, a portal to another land in the last place you’d expect it. It lasted through tiki’s darkest years, until it closed in 2008. It wasn’t easy to get there, but I should have done it.

We don’t have many grand palaces of tiki left, and this loss in 2015 was hard to swallow. The Jardin Tiki grew from the ashes of Montreal’s Kon-Tiki, housing many of its pieces, and so much more. Waterfalls! Streams! Turtles! Tikis! Thank goodness John Trivisonno took so many wonderful photos, to let us feel like we’ve been there… but surely it’s nothing like the real thing.

Back in the huge peak of Polynesian restaurant grandeur of the 1960s, the Hilton hotel chain had Trader Vic’s locations, the Sheraton had Kon-Tiki, and Marriott entered the field with their Kona Kai chain. The Chicago location closed in 1998, but for years afterward remained intact, occasionally rented out for special events. It was at one of those events, the Exotica tiki tour in 2004, that I got to see it. I was having such a grand time, I didn’t use my camera. I only have my fuzzy memories.

The Kahiki closed in 2000, right around the time I was building my first home tiki bar. I didn’t learn about the place until a couple years later. The closing night party has become stuff of legend: Sven Kirsten arrived with the very first copies of his brand-new book, The Book of Tiki. Otto von Stroheim proposed to Baby-Doe there that night. If only my obsession had launched a scant couple of years earlier, I might have been able to join them!

I was born and raised in Seattle, and the Trader Vic’s location there—only the second Trader Vic’s location after the original Oakland one!—closed just as I was entering adulthood in 1992. If I could get a do-over, I’d do every fancy birthday dinner there.

I am glad to have made Tiki-Ti my living room when I lived in Los Angeles.

And there are dozens more wonderful classic bars and restaurants that, when they someday close, I will of course be crushed… but the blow will be eased by my having seen them with my own eyes, and made my own memories. I’m so glad I’ve made efforts to see as many of these classic treasures as possible.

Don’t let your tiki regrets pile up. Make an effort to get to the places we still have, while we still have them.

Tiki Oasis sold out in a blink this year (!), leaving a lot of folks free this August, and perhaps even with a bit of travel budget burning a hole in their pockets. Use it to see the Polynesian restaurants and tiki bars of your dreams. Use what’s left of your summer to explore tiki in the real world.

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11 thoughts on “My Tiki Bar Regrets”

Let me know if you decide to come and see the Hôtel-Motel Coconut in Trois Rivières, Mrs Big Wiener and I will join you for the evening and we can even take you to see the remains of the Jardin Tiki in Montreal.

It is, and a few other bars around Montreal are also REALLY good at tiki cocktails (even if their decor isn’t exactly tiki) like the “Le 132-Bar Vintage” (I keep challenging their head bartender by asking for drinks he has to research to do them as close to the original recipe as possible…lol)

Critiki News is hosted by WordPress.com, looks like that’s the automated notification message when someone likes your comment. They have a little bit of their own social ecosystem. I liked your comment, so it’s talking about me and the site you’re already on, which is… confusing.

The Aku Tiki Room was my #2 after the Mai-Kai and close to the Hala Kahiki. I was planning a very epic event there when I heard it was closing. It would have been awesome! Local vintage old school theater was going to show Blue Hawaii. A bus running from the small town hotel to the property all day and night. Car show on the property. Java was doing a burlesque event. Symposiums in the Aku all day. Entertainment in the round in the evening with King K and Pablus…. Maybe even worse was when I found out about the auction and called the owner. I asked if I might could get something to remember the place by. “You could have anything you want for free if you’d called last week. It’s all in the auction companies hands now.” ANYTHING. FREE. That sunken bar was the best…